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MOHOLY-NAGY, László
MOHOLY-NAGY, László
painter, sculptor, photographer, art writer
(20 July, 1895, Bácsborsód – 24 Nov. 1946, Chicago)
Moholy-Nagy was a multisided, true avant-garde personality who experimented in a vast number of genres. His most productive period was closely connected to the art of Germany during the 1920’s. His legal studies, begun in Hungary, as well as literary experimentations, then later his active participation in the First World War, did not have such a influential effect on his works as did his relationship with the group related to the MA periodical of Budapest. Primarily the portrait and landscape paintings of József Lampérth Nemes, Uitz Béla, Lajos Tihanyi were the greatest influences on the development of his own personal style. Even though he did not participate in the art-political struggles of the Soviet Republic, he left the country in 1919, and traveled first to Vienna, then settled down in Berlin around the beginning of the 1920’s. While his activist mentality lived on within his portrait and landscape works, he became acquainted with International Dadaism in Berlin, as well as with the most important trends and representatives of Russian constructivism. Among his friends were Hausmann Raoul Hausmann, Höch Hannah, El Liszickij, Punyi Ivan, etc. He regularly held exhibitions together with the Hungarian sculptor László Péri at the Der Strum Gallery of Berlin as well as at the left-wing Novembergruppe of Berlin. He became the co-worker of the MA of Vienna from 1921. His Dadaist “industrial landscapes” were produced inspired by the bridges and transformers of Berlin in 1921. These works were also published in the album entitled the Horizont, published by the MA periodical. A unique version of geometric abstraction became dominant in his painting from 1922, which he himself labeled glass-structure. He published the Új Művészek Könyve /Book of New Artists/ in both Hungarian and German together with Kassák Lajos in Vienna, in 1922. From the spring of 1923, at the invitation of Walter Gropius, he taught at the Bauhaus of Weimar, as the youngest professor of the institution. Besides being the artistic leader of the introductory course held by him, he dealt with the creation of the artistic folders of the Bauhaus, the designing of the new, up to date Bauhaus typography, and the editing of the series of Bauhaus Books. His most harmonious abstract paintings, photographs, ‘photograms’, and ‘photoplastics’ were produced during this period, furthermore his Filmváz /Film-frame/ was published in the MA. Further accomplishments of his during the time were the film scenario entitled A nagyváros dinamikája /The dynamics of the large city/, and two independent books published within the framework of the Bauhaus-series: Festészet, fényképészet, film /Painting, photography, and film/ (1925) and the Az anyagtól az építészetig /From material to architecture/ (1929). In 1928, following the example of Gropius, he left the Bauhaus, and settled down in Berlin. His early kinetic work the Fény-tér-mudulátor /Light-Space-Modulator/, which produced an array of colorful lights, was first introduced in Paris at the Werkbund exhibition, in 1930. His abstract film entitled Fekete-fehér-szürke filmjáték /Black, white, and gray motion picture/ was produced with the utilization of this his work. During the meantime he regularly published, primarily in relation to photography, in the i 10 of Amsterdam, the Dokumentum /Document/ and the Munka /Work/ periodicals of Budapest, then in the Telehor of Bruno. In 1934 he moved to Amsterdam, then in 1935 to London, where he provided pragmatic, commercial assistance to György Kepes. At the invitation of Gropius, he traveled to Chicago in 1937, where he settled down permanently, and became the president of the Bauhaus-American School of Design. After the New Bauhaus was terminated due financial causes in 1938 Moholy-Nagy founded his own institute under the name of School of Design, which was renamed Institute of Design, and gained college status in 1944. Moholy-Nagy taught at the Institute up until his death. He finished his book entitled Látás Mozgásban /Sight in Movement/ in 1945, which constitutes a summarization of his multi-decade experiences. The many images chosen by the artist are an inseparable part of the compilation. The artistic heritage of Moholy-Nagy, especially his research conducted in the field of photographic art, gained more and more popularity internationally, and a number of exhibitions and publications dealt with his oeuvre.
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As leader of the Hungarian avant-garde Kassák saw it as his most important activity to link Hungarian art to the lively circulation of international culture. Perhaps the greatest proof of his avhievement in this respect is László Moholy-Nagy, for whom Kassák's avant-garde periodical Ma ("Today") provided the intellectual sustenance Moholy-Nagy's fellow artists mostly acquired from various academies of art. In 1913 Moholy-Nagy enrolled as a law student at the university in Budapest, but then the war came and he found himself at the front, and from there - from the evidence of the drawings on the postcards he sent home - he signed up at least as an aspiring artist with the aesthete and art critic Iván Hevesy. After demobilisation he lived in Szeged and held his first exhibition there - praised by the poet Gyula Juhász - and then, after a short stay in Vienna, he settled in Berlin. At the beginning of the twenties Berlin was the centre of the avant-garde of Central and Eastern Europe and also of Constructivism. And with astonishing proficiency and compelling accuracy he mastered both the practice and the theory of the movement that proclaimed salvation for the world. He was in direct and close contact with Kassák, then editing Ma from Vienna; his works regularly appeared in that periodical, and together they edited their 1922 album Új mûvészet könyve (The Book of New Art). When Itten, one of the leading teachers at the Bauhaus, left, and Gropius, the director, was looking around for a successor to take charge of the preparatory course, his choice fell on Moholy-Nagy, whom he saw as an ideal collaborator. For Moholy-Nagy was a committed representative of the new art that was enthused by industrial civilisation, and it was in this spirit that they devised the Bauhaus's teaching method and edited the college's series of publications, with Moholy-Nagy writing some himself. (His most important work was From Material to Architecture, 1929.) Though he did not stop painting, and even sought a fine-art definition of photography, it was he who he produced the first mobile, the moving-glinting abstract sculpture called "Light-Space Modulator", at the beginning of the twenties. As Gropius's ally he was crucial in gradually getting the training of artists as conceived in Expressionist terms to develop into the workshop for industrial design. He followed Gropius in leaving the Bauhaus in 1928, but his enthusiasm was undiminished: as well as Constructivist pictures he designed stage-sets, wrote articles and worked in applied graphics. In 1937 he went to America and founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago. He headed that institution until his death not very long afterwards. (Krisztina Passuth: László Moholy-Nagy. Budapest, 1982 - French version 1983, German and English 1984.)
[József Vadas: Hungarian Masterpieces (Vadas József: A magyar festészet remekei), translator: Godfrey Offord, Corvina Publishers, 2004.] Bibliography:
Moholy-Nagy, S.: Moholy-Nagy Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, Mass., 1969
Weitemeier, H.: Lichtvisionen Ein Experiment von László Moholy-Nagy, Berlin, 1972
Kostelanetz, R. (Edit.): László Moholy-Nagy, New York, 1970
Moholy, L.: Marginalien zu László Moholy-Nagy, Krefeld, 1972
Weitemeier, H.: László Moholy-Nagy, (cat. intro., Stuttgart, 1974)
Haus, A.: Moholy-Nagy Fotos und Fotogramme, München, 1978
Moholy-Nagy, L.: A festéktõl a fényig (compiled by Sugár, E., intro: Mezei, J.), Bucarest, 1979
László Moholy-Nagy munkássága (biography: Beke, L.), Budapest, 1980
Passuth, K.: László Moholy-Nagy, Budapest, 1982
László Moholy-Nagy: A New Vision for Chicago, Chicago, 1990 (cat.)
László Moholy-Nagy, Marseille, 1991 (cat.)
Müller, C.: TYPOFOTO Wege der Typografie zur Foto-Text-Montage bei László Moholy-Nagy, Berlin, 1994
László Moholy-Nagy: From Budapest to Berlin 1914-1923, Delaware, 1995 (cat.)
Kaplan, L.: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Biographical Writings, London, 1995
László Moholy-Nagy: 100 fotó, Kecskemét, 1995 (cat.)
Findeli, A.: Le Bauhaus de Chicago L'oeuvre pédagogique de László Moholy-Nagy, Paris, 1995
M. Hight, E.: Picturing Modernism, Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany, Cambridge, Mass., 1995
László Moholy-Nagy fotogramok, Budapest, 1996
Über Moholy-Nagy (Edited: Jäger, G. és Wessing, G.), Bielefeld, 1997.
painter, sculptor, photographer, art writer
(20 July, 1895, Bácsborsód – 24 Nov. 1946, Chicago)
Moholy-Nagy was a multisided, true avant-garde personality who experimented in a vast number of genres. His most productive period was closely connected to the art of Germany during the 1920’s. His legal studies, begun in Hungary, as well as literary experimentations, then later his active participation in the First World War, did not have such a influential effect on his works as did his relationship with the group related to the MA periodical of Budapest. Primarily the portrait and landscape paintings of József Lampérth Nemes, Uitz Béla, Lajos Tihanyi were the greatest influences on the development of his own personal style. Even though he did not participate in the art-political struggles of the Soviet Republic, he left the country in 1919, and traveled first to Vienna, then settled down in Berlin around the beginning of the 1920’s. While his activist mentality lived on within his portrait and landscape works, he became acquainted with International Dadaism in Berlin, as well as with the most important trends and representatives of Russian constructivism. Among his friends were Hausmann Raoul Hausmann, Höch Hannah, El Liszickij, Punyi Ivan, etc. He regularly held exhibitions together with the Hungarian sculptor László Péri at the Der Strum Gallery of Berlin as well as at the left-wing Novembergruppe of Berlin. He became the co-worker of the MA of Vienna from 1921. His Dadaist “industrial landscapes” were produced inspired by the bridges and transformers of Berlin in 1921. These works were also published in the album entitled the Horizont, published by the MA periodical. A unique version of geometric abstraction became dominant in his painting from 1922, which he himself labeled glass-structure. He published the Új Művészek Könyve /Book of New Artists/ in both Hungarian and German together with Kassák Lajos in Vienna, in 1922. From the spring of 1923, at the invitation of Walter Gropius, he taught at the Bauhaus of Weimar, as the youngest professor of the institution. Besides being the artistic leader of the introductory course held by him, he dealt with the creation of the artistic folders of the Bauhaus, the designing of the new, up to date Bauhaus typography, and the editing of the series of Bauhaus Books. His most harmonious abstract paintings, photographs, ‘photograms’, and ‘photoplastics’ were produced during this period, furthermore his Filmváz /Film-frame/ was published in the MA. Further accomplishments of his during the time were the film scenario entitled A nagyváros dinamikája /The dynamics of the large city/, and two independent books published within the framework of the Bauhaus-series: Festészet, fényképészet, film /Painting, photography, and film/ (1925) and the Az anyagtól az építészetig /From material to architecture/ (1929). In 1928, following the example of Gropius, he left the Bauhaus, and settled down in Berlin. His early kinetic work the Fény-tér-mudulátor /Light-Space-Modulator/, which produced an array of colorful lights, was first introduced in Paris at the Werkbund exhibition, in 1930. His abstract film entitled Fekete-fehér-szürke filmjáték /Black, white, and gray motion picture/ was produced with the utilization of this his work. During the meantime he regularly published, primarily in relation to photography, in the i 10 of Amsterdam, the Dokumentum /Document/ and the Munka /Work/ periodicals of Budapest, then in the Telehor of Bruno. In 1934 he moved to Amsterdam, then in 1935 to London, where he provided pragmatic, commercial assistance to György Kepes. At the invitation of Gropius, he traveled to Chicago in 1937, where he settled down permanently, and became the president of the Bauhaus-American School of Design. After the New Bauhaus was terminated due financial causes in 1938 Moholy-Nagy founded his own institute under the name of School of Design, which was renamed Institute of Design, and gained college status in 1944. Moholy-Nagy taught at the Institute up until his death. He finished his book entitled Látás Mozgásban /Sight in Movement/ in 1945, which constitutes a summarization of his multi-decade experiences. The many images chosen by the artist are an inseparable part of the compilation. The artistic heritage of Moholy-Nagy, especially his research conducted in the field of photographic art, gained more and more popularity internationally, and a number of exhibitions and publications dealt with his oeuvre.
***********************************************
As leader of the Hungarian avant-garde Kassák saw it as his most important activity to link Hungarian art to the lively circulation of international culture. Perhaps the greatest proof of his avhievement in this respect is László Moholy-Nagy, for whom Kassák's avant-garde periodical Ma ("Today") provided the intellectual sustenance Moholy-Nagy's fellow artists mostly acquired from various academies of art. In 1913 Moholy-Nagy enrolled as a law student at the university in Budapest, but then the war came and he found himself at the front, and from there - from the evidence of the drawings on the postcards he sent home - he signed up at least as an aspiring artist with the aesthete and art critic Iván Hevesy. After demobilisation he lived in Szeged and held his first exhibition there - praised by the poet Gyula Juhász - and then, after a short stay in Vienna, he settled in Berlin. At the beginning of the twenties Berlin was the centre of the avant-garde of Central and Eastern Europe and also of Constructivism. And with astonishing proficiency and compelling accuracy he mastered both the practice and the theory of the movement that proclaimed salvation for the world. He was in direct and close contact with Kassák, then editing Ma from Vienna; his works regularly appeared in that periodical, and together they edited their 1922 album Új mûvészet könyve (The Book of New Art). When Itten, one of the leading teachers at the Bauhaus, left, and Gropius, the director, was looking around for a successor to take charge of the preparatory course, his choice fell on Moholy-Nagy, whom he saw as an ideal collaborator. For Moholy-Nagy was a committed representative of the new art that was enthused by industrial civilisation, and it was in this spirit that they devised the Bauhaus's teaching method and edited the college's series of publications, with Moholy-Nagy writing some himself. (His most important work was From Material to Architecture, 1929.) Though he did not stop painting, and even sought a fine-art definition of photography, it was he who he produced the first mobile, the moving-glinting abstract sculpture called "Light-Space Modulator", at the beginning of the twenties. As Gropius's ally he was crucial in gradually getting the training of artists as conceived in Expressionist terms to develop into the workshop for industrial design. He followed Gropius in leaving the Bauhaus in 1928, but his enthusiasm was undiminished: as well as Constructivist pictures he designed stage-sets, wrote articles and worked in applied graphics. In 1937 he went to America and founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago. He headed that institution until his death not very long afterwards. (Krisztina Passuth: László Moholy-Nagy. Budapest, 1982 - French version 1983, German and English 1984.)
[József Vadas: Hungarian Masterpieces (Vadas József: A magyar festészet remekei), translator: Godfrey Offord, Corvina Publishers, 2004.] Bibliography:
Moholy-Nagy, S.: Moholy-Nagy Experiment in Totality, Cambridge, Mass., 1969
Weitemeier, H.: Lichtvisionen Ein Experiment von László Moholy-Nagy, Berlin, 1972
Kostelanetz, R. (Edit.): László Moholy-Nagy, New York, 1970
Moholy, L.: Marginalien zu László Moholy-Nagy, Krefeld, 1972
Weitemeier, H.: László Moholy-Nagy, (cat. intro., Stuttgart, 1974)
Haus, A.: Moholy-Nagy Fotos und Fotogramme, München, 1978
Moholy-Nagy, L.: A festéktõl a fényig (compiled by Sugár, E., intro: Mezei, J.), Bucarest, 1979
László Moholy-Nagy munkássága (biography: Beke, L.), Budapest, 1980
Passuth, K.: László Moholy-Nagy, Budapest, 1982
László Moholy-Nagy: A New Vision for Chicago, Chicago, 1990 (cat.)
László Moholy-Nagy, Marseille, 1991 (cat.)
Müller, C.: TYPOFOTO Wege der Typografie zur Foto-Text-Montage bei László Moholy-Nagy, Berlin, 1994
László Moholy-Nagy: From Budapest to Berlin 1914-1923, Delaware, 1995 (cat.)
Kaplan, L.: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Biographical Writings, London, 1995
László Moholy-Nagy: 100 fotó, Kecskemét, 1995 (cat.)
Findeli, A.: Le Bauhaus de Chicago L'oeuvre pédagogique de László Moholy-Nagy, Paris, 1995
M. Hight, E.: Picturing Modernism, Moholy-Nagy and Photography in Weimar Germany, Cambridge, Mass., 1995
László Moholy-Nagy fotogramok, Budapest, 1996
Über Moholy-Nagy (Edited: Jäger, G. és Wessing, G.), Bielefeld, 1997.
